Page 70 of The Devil's Advocate

‘You used to be a doctor. Isn’t it a doctor’s first duty to preserve life?’

He hung his head. I could see the question was eating him up inside. Not the rhetorical question I’d asked him. No, the big question. The question we all ask ourselves at one time or another. It is the question implied in Martin Niemöller’s confession speech in 1946. His words were given poetic form and now adorn several holocaust museums. Martin said that when they came for the socialists, he did not speak because he was not a socialist. Then they came for the communists, the trade unionists, then the Jews, and he was not a communist, a trade unionist, nor a Jew, and he did not speak. The last line haunts the heart.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

At what point do you take a stand? When will you speak?

That’s the question in Farnesworth’s mind. I could tell by the coats on the rack in the hallway, and the way the place was decorated, Farnesworth had a wife – one he probably cared for very much. He was weighing up the risk of harm coming to her, against the dark shame that would come from refusing me.

‘I can’t,’ he said.

I’d asked myself the question a long time ago. And I’d spoken. I stand in court for those who need me, no matter what. It had cost me everything. My marriage, my relationship with my daughter. And more recently, a woman I had grown to love very much. Doing the right thing has consequences, same as doing nothing. And it can be just as hard to look at yourself in the mirror.

I nodded. I understood Farnesworth’s fear. He was right to be afraid.

‘Okay, but now you’ve got two choices. I know you’ve got the photos, and I need them. You can give them to me, or I can take them. There are no halfway houses here, Doc.’

‘I’ll give you the damn photos, but I will not set foot in a courtroom. That means you can’t use them in the trial, right?’

‘Just give me the photos,’ I said.

He moved to the desk, unlocked it and fingered through some files before withdrawing an envelope and handing it over. It was open, and I reached inside and withdrew the photo book.

‘I think whatever was in those photos got Cody and Betty killed,’ said Farnesworth. ‘I’ll have to live with that.’

I found the close-ups of the wounds on her head.

‘The star-shaped impact pattern wraps around the front of the skull. Like she was imprinted,’ he said.

The photos got closer and closer on the wounds, showing a zoom progression. The final picture, probably taken with the camera lens almost touching the skin, was the one that had gotten Cody killed. I was sure of it. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew it was trouble.

‘Are those symbols on her skin above the star?’ I asked.

‘I didn’t see them initially. My eyes are not what they were. Cody saw something in the photographs I’d taken and got them enlarged. Then he came to see me to talk it over. When he walked out my front door that’s the last anyone saw of him.’

‘What are those marks? Are they burns?’

‘No, they’re bruise patterns. The skin wraps around an object that comes into contact with it at speed and with force. The impact site can appear white with discoloration around it, making the shape clearer. The symbols were on the ring. They are repeated, very faintly, with each blow, but that was the wound with the best visual of the imprint. That’s the photograph that Cody thought was important.’

I saw what looked like a crescent shape and two horizontal dashes connected by a vertical line. The symbols were small, maybe only a quarter of an inch. I knew the symbol on her skin was a mirror image of the symbol on the ring.

It was two letters. Sitting just above the star.

F C

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

BLOCH

Bloch stood on the corner of 15th Street and Main, scanning the parking lot on the opposite side of the street. A parking lot behind a wire fence that could take maybe fifty cars. On either side of the lot was a post office that looked like it had been there for a while, and a bagel shop that looked like it had been there five minutes. On Bloch’s side of the street was a warehouse, and a candy store that faced the lot.

It was 10.01 in the a.m., and the person she was supposed to meet was technically one minute late. She caught herself grinding her teeth, stopped it. Popped a piece of Juicy Fruit in her mouth and sighed.

If Bloch said she would be somewhere at a certain time, she was there, at the exact spot, where she was supposed to be, at the exact time or earlier. She could not abide being late, or anyone else who wasn’t on time. Things were supposed to be done in a certain way. She still struggled with those who were not on her program.

A Lincoln Navigator entered the parking lot across the street. The tires crunching over the layer of gravel at the entrance, and then rolling onto the smooth concrete. The Lincoln reversed into a space, and a lady in a beige top, flannel pants and hemp shoes got out of the car. She had brown hair, tied up, and a necklace of fine gold with a lump of what looked like jade on the end of it. Bloch crossed the street and met the lady as she was exiting the lot.

‘Jane?’ asked Bloch.